The

The Hello and welcome to behind the news. My name is Doug Henwood. A mildly scandalous departure from prevailing norms today, three guests and two segments.

Barry Eichen Green will talk about the economic role of the U.S. dollar, and Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan will delve into the topic of their new show, Why is the U.S. always at war.

Trump's tariffs were a shock to the financial markets, though the shock seems to have passed for now.

But there are some lingering issues, serious lingering issues.

One is the role of the U.S. dollar, which is effectively the world currency.

From Trump's election through inauguration day, gained almost 6% against a basket of foreign currencies,

no down in anticipation of a return to greatness.

Those gains were largely reversed by the time Trump announced his tariffs on what he ludicrously called Liberation Day, and the dollar has fallen further since, so it's now almost

8% below where it was when he took the oath of office.

This isn't really a sign that America is becoming great again.

Here with more is Barry Eichengreen,

a professor of economics at Berkeley, and a man who wrote the book on the dollar's global role,

exorbitant privilege, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. The title comes from a phrase coined in the 1960s by Valerie Giscard de Stang, then the Finance Minister of France, and later

its president. Barry Eichen Green.

As I recall, you used to sound pretty convinced about the continuing centrality of the U.S. dollar.

You're sounding a lot less so now.

Why is that?

Well, because a lot of the things that we took for granted about their supporting the dollar

can no longer be taken for granted. Most fundamentally, the U.S.

playing by the rules, rule of law, separation of powers, that no one will arbitrarily change the

rules of the economic and financial game. Those factors working in favor of the dollar

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